Editor's Note: November 2006

2:06 or 6:02

I’ve liked Hendrick Ramaala from the first time I met him. I was riding in the athletes’ van from the host hotel to the start of the 2002 World’s Best 10K in Puerto Rico. Amid the quiet pre-race tension as athletes prepared to challenge themselves and their rivals, Ramaala was relaxed and jovial.

He pointed out a security guard in front of the hotel who was wearing a muscle shirt which displayed bulging shoulders. "I want to look like that," Ramaala said, with a grin. "The chicks go for muscles like that." An hour later, despite his laid back attitude, he won the race in 28:15, over the likes of Paul Tergat, Thomas Nyariki, John Yuda, Rogers Rop. . . The next day, on the van to the airport, he and compatriot Shadrack Hoff joked with my son, telling him, "Don’t become a runner. It’s too hard work."

I’ve rooted for Ramaala in both his victories and defeats in the ensuing years — including a DNF at Athens after leading for many miles, a victory at the 2004 ING New York City Marathon, and a leaning-at the-tape, second-place finish to Tergat at NYC in 2005. We’ve only met in passing, but he’s always impressed me with his attitude and composure. So I was thrilled when I had the chance to visit him at his home in South Africa while accompanying my wife on a business trip last spring.

Seeing him at home didn’t disappoint, as I discovered that he is not only fast and funny, but generous and caring toward his family and friends and even more accessible than he appears at international races. Unlike some champions whose lives seem too remote and exotic to have any correlation with our running, Ramaala runs with friends in a nearby city park, constructs his own training plans, and juggles his workouts around caring for his 6-year-old son and the chores of quotidian life: shopping, cooking, driving in traffic. While Ramaala’s workout volume and pace are well beyond what I can attempt, I discovered that his training is neither complex, nor does it require any special setting or coaching, and I came away motivated by his attitude and eager to run more like Hendrick.

I hope you will feel the same after reading our feature on Ramaala starting on page 22. You’ll find more advice, gleaned from the world’s elites and applied to runners of various levels, in "Rethinking Marathon Training" starting on page 38, in the story on how running affects the immune system starting on page 30, and in our numerous regular columns such as Leading Edge, Racing and Age Group Ace. The more I learn about runners, the more I find that the principles are the same, whether you run the marathon in 2:06 or 6:02. We’re confident that wherever you fall on that spectrum you’ll find plenty here for you.

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